Forum:Accents, good and bad
In my current playthrough I've started to ask myself some questions about accents used by voice actors in the Mass Effect series. I don't in any way wish to cast value judgements on what accents 'should' sound like - just look at the talk page attached to Miranda Lawson page to see folks getting militant about accents and nationalities. What I'd like to discuss is which accents are what people think sound right, i.e. Oriana Lawson has a fake Australian accent, but a very high quality attempt at a notoriously difficult to mimic accent. (It took a few playthroughs before my native ear started to notice something was not quite right) Also which ones sound poor, i.e. Donovan Hock's over the top South African, Zimbabwean accent. And feel free to speculate on some puzzlers, i.e. if the quarians have a mix of British and European accents, but no North American sounding accents at all, then why do their offspring, the Geth, all have American accents? I've noticed some of our Brits commenting on poor quality British accents in the London parts of ME3. My Australian ear cannot detect them. Please feel free to explain which ones an why. Infiltrator N7 (talk) 02:45, August 6, 2012 (UTC) :My headcanon suspended disbelief by inserting the theory that your Shep's translator assigned accents based on your species culture. Of course, that completely falls apart when people from different nations start comparing the accents they hear. After all, why would an Australian's translator present a bad fake Australian accent? :Several quarians sounded middle eastern to me, rather than a conglomeration of European accents. Although, there were a few quarians who did sound a bit more British than the others. Then there was Kal Reegar, who you missed in your assessment, speaking just plain old American accented Anglish of the flavor spoken by Shepard. Unless your male Shepard, as the voice actor is Canadian, it would be a Canadian accent, not American.--MAsseffectfreak (talk) 21:17, August 8, 2012 (UTC) :My ear cannot detect most of the poor British accents, expect the glaring ones. The NAmerican accents are generally fine until someone starts trying to lean on a certain regional accent too much. For instance, most Turians sounded NAmerican, but there was a considerable number of them in all three games leaning heavily on a New York City accent. Everytime I heard them, I wanted to laugh. I think they were trying to emphasize Turian toughness by going for "Not just NAmerican, but hard boiled American!" - Even the weaselly Turians! 14:38, August 6, 2012 (UTC) Hock's got African accent? I always thought he was Scottish or something, since it's almost the same way that John Ullyatt also voices Donnelly. And the latter has horrible Scottish impersonation from what I've heard, pretty stereotypical. --Kainzorus Prime Walkie-talkie 14:47, August 6, 2012 (UTC) I'm still wondering what accent Udina has. It sounds like nothing I've ever heard. Also, humans had a lot less accent-speaking people as the series went by: in ME1 we had Dr. Michel, Lt. Girard, Yaroslev Tartakovsky and maybe a few others, in ME2 there's Donovan Hock, Kasumi, Ken (probably others, but I can't remember any) in ME3 there's pretty much no (new) human I can remember using some sort of foreign accent. LeoJo (talk) 15:13, August 6, 2012 (UTC) :Udina's was period American Politician in tone. It's the sort of tone you don't hear except out of the mouths of self-important people. There are many regional accents in the States, and I can identify several, but that sounded more of a period accent than a regional one. Hock's was definitely South African, but it's not like I hear one outside of commercials for the diamond industry here, so I can't tell how outrageous it might be considered. 00:11, August 7, 2012 (UTC) Hock's over-done south African accent and Donnelly's American interpretation of a Scottish accent (that sounded more Northern Irish at times) are the two worst accents in the game in my opinion. Granted, the South African accent is notoriously hard to imitate, but if they wanted him to be of that particular descent so badly, why not actually get a voice actor from the region? As for Udina, I cannot for the life of me figure out what accent he is using, but I think the stilted way he speaks may be hindering detection - at times he sounds like a really advanced text-to-speech program. However canonically, what we must remember when trying to decipher accents, is that Mass Effect is set over 150 years in the future. With the population explosion on earth coupled with the increased globalism we are experiencing now, followed by an intense period interstellar expansion, accents will become more homogeneous and/or warped. Further in the future, Colonies may develop their own accents and dialects, but we enter the Mass Effect universe during a unique period in Humanity's existence; Globalism had reached its zenith only decades prior and we were still in our infancy as regards galactic expansion. At that point in time we are as homogeneous as a population as we will ever be (although far more diverse by alien standards).--An Ceannaire (talk) 18:18, August 6, 2012 (UTC) LegionnaireScout, thankyou. I did forget about Kal Reegar, and yes Quarian accents do sound like they span all the way from Britain to Iran. I think you may have nailed the answer to the question, An Ceannaire! My accent only evolved in the last century and a half, with the New Zealand accent, arguably, being only a few decades old, so two centuries from now who knows what we'll be hearing. Infiltrator N7 (talk) 22:28, August 6, 2012 (UTC) Was Masani NZ? He was a puzzler that my ear did strange things with. I enjoyed it, but wasn't sure if it was Australian or NZ. Donnelly's accent was all over the place, but got more markedly ethnic in ME3, like the director told him to kick it up a notch. My own Anglish is generic; what some people call a Midwestern or "Evening News" accent - which is to say, it's American English lacking in any regional accent at all. When I tell people, particularly other Americans, where specifically I'm from, the most common reaction I get is disbelief. If the person I'm talking to is from overseas, then I can only add that they've been watching shows with over the top American accents if they think mine is really that unusual. I also pick up and discard regional accents quickly when I travel in the US. If I traveled with regularity, my accent would likely just turn into a mess. I could not imagine what it would become if I worked on a station of not just other American, or human crewmates, but of Turian, Salarians, Asari and their colonial personnel. 00:11, August 7, 2012 (UTC) Here in Oz we are exposed to quite a few New Zealand and South African accents (S.A. accents are particularly common in the West, where I often travel) and whatever Masani's accent is I can assure you that it isn't Aussie, Kiwi or Saffa. The voice actor is British so I expect one of the British contributors to this forum might be able to set us straight on what Zaeed Masani's accent most sounds like.Infiltrator N7 (talk) 00:51, August 7, 2012 (UTC) ^^^ Zaeed was voiced by a British person, so I'd assume Zaeed is of British decent. --MAsseffectfreak (talk) 21:17, August 8, 2012 (UTC)